


phlogiston

by corydalis



Series: KlanceWeek2k16 [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Established Relationship, Fire, Klance Week 2016, M/M, Making Out, also an overuse of fire imagery, i feel free after writing this, makeouts and heavy introspection and 'oh shit im in love', set like three years into the voltron gig, the prompt was fire/ice but this is basically fire/water
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-09
Updated: 2016-08-09
Packaged: 2018-08-07 18:29:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7725145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corydalis/pseuds/corydalis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Lance was eight years old, his abuelita sat him on her knee and told him; love is a leveler.</p><p>At the time, Lance had no idea what she meant. Love was still a rather far-off and foreign concept, but he was enamoured with the general idea behind it, even if it seemed a bit confusing. The phrase stuck with him, but had ultimately been pushed to the back of his mind when he couldn’t figure it out.</p><p>Now though, his back arched against the wall and Keith burning caustic kisses into his skin, he thinks he might get it.</p><p>--<br/><i>DAY 5:<b> fire </b>// ice</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	phlogiston

**Author's Note:**

> this is a day late so i have brought an apology of space makeouts. this started out hot but somehow ended up being rly sappy and gay and iM NOT SORRY AT ALL let these boys fall in love.

When Lance was eight years old, his abuelita sat him on her knee and told him; _love is a leveler._

At the time, Lance had no idea what she meant. Love was still a rather far-off and foreign concept, but he was enamoured with the general idea behind it, even if it seemed a bit confusing. He hadn’t known what the word ‘leveler’ meant at all, but he hadn’t wanted to bring attention to that, especially when abuelita always praised him for being so smart.

The phrase stuck with him, but had ultimately been pushed to the back of his mind when he couldn’t figure it out.

Now though, his back arched against the wall and Keith burning caustic kisses into his skin, he thinks he might get it.

Fingers ghost up his sides, under his shirt, a trail searing heat over the planes of his back. Lance pushes back, hands wandering down down down, until Keith gasps hot and wet against his throat.

“ _Lance,_ ” he hisses, heavy and full of promise and god, Lance will never ever doubt whether or not Keith wants him again, not after hearing his name like that.

 _It’s in the way he looks at you,_ Hunk had said once. _Like you’re the ocean, and he’s desperate to drown._

Keith’s mouth find his again, lips fervent against his own, and there’s so much _heat_ , burning, blistering, intoxicating, and Lance thinks, _I’m going to die._

If Lance is the ocean, then Keith must be the sun.

And everyone always seems to think it’s the other way around; because _Lance_ is the excitable one, cracking jokes and grinning wide, but when the hell did that ever start to mean _sun_?

No, Keith is the sun; admired by many from afar - _god, those people at the Garrison have no idea_ \- but when you get close, it throws everything you’d ever thought you’d known about it straight back in your face. The sun is stupidly romanticised by people who have never really known it, because hardly anyone bothers going to space to see it up close.

Because the sun - the _real_ sun - is terrifying in its intensity, all fire and passion and a single purpose and if you get in its way it will _burn you alive_. The sun is scorching, stubborn and unrelenting, and getting close is a risk at best and borderline insanity at worst.

The sun is also fucking beautiful.

It’s raw power, sustaining lives and lighting the darkest corners of the universe with its warmth, and it _never_ goes down quietly. It’s a supernova of impulse and instinct and purpose and _heat_ , unstoppable, inextinguishable, irresistible. It’s relentless and wonderful and dangerous and Lance must be completely out of his mind, because he can’t think of anything more amazing than throwing himself into the blaze.

A half-gloved hand slides into his hair, twisting, tugging, never hard enough to hurt but just enough to direct, to tell Lance _yes_ and _more_ , because Keith is fire incarnate and fire always wants more. And if Lance is the ocean - an endless expanse of want and emotion - then he will always have more to give him.

He feels like he’s drenched to the bone in sweat, in gasoline - a chemical rainbow on the water’s surface - and every movement of Keith’s lips against his own and Keith’s hands on his body is another spark that sets him alight.

 _An ocean on fire_ , he thinks vaguely.

_(his old lit. teacher would be proud)_

_Burn me,_ he thinks, pressing back almost desperately. _Incinerate me, turn me to smoke- come on cariño, show me what you’ve got._

_Cremate me alive._

And maybe this is what it means. Love is a leveler because it strips you down to cinders, to the rawest parts of yourself and lays your soul completely bare for the other to see, whether you want it to or not but _god_ , Lance wants it. He craves intimacy like a drug, and now that he has it - _and if you’d told him three years ago who it would be with, he’d never have believed you, but that was three years ago and he wouldn’t trade this for fucking anything_ \- it’s threatening to consume him whole. He wants it to.

And maybe it’s always been this way and he just never realised, because in reality Keith had stormed like a fireball through every defence Lance had thought he’d had the very day they met, turning them to ashes like paper. He’d been immediately noticed and immediately important, and regardless of what Lance had thought the feeling was at the time - _it wasn’t anger, or hate, it had been jealousy and awe and infatuation_ \- Keith had thundered through the doors to Lance’s inner thoughts and settled himself in like he had every right to be there.

But he’d returned the favour, in time. He’d pushed and prodded at Keith’s own barriers until they eventually wore away. Like water eroding the cliffside; persistent but so steady, so consistent, that you don’t even realise the difference until you look down and realise how far you are from where you started. And then, before you can even think to stop it, suddenly the whole thing comes crashing down at once.

Keith pulls back just enough to breathe Lance’s name against his lips, more of a hot wash of air than an actual word, but it’s still enough to make Lance shudder.

Even after all this time and how long they’ve been together, every point of contact still feels like an intoxicating electric shock through his veins.

His eyes open, and he’s immediately pinned by the look in Keith’s. Eyes half-lidded, pupils dilated, a goddamn thunderstorm in his gaze, and it shakes Lance to his core, knowing he put that look there. That he’s the one responsible for Keith’s flushed skin and ragged breathing.

It would make him feel powerful if Keith didn’t have the exact same effect on him. But Keith does, because Keith always somehow, impossibly, balances Lance out.

Love is a leveler because it makes the two of you equal. It takes you down to nothing and then you build each other back up. And maybe he and Keith don’t do that the way most couples do - the way Lance saw his parents do - but he loves what they have.

He loves the constant challenge and the fierce want to impress, to prove that he’s just that little bit more. It makes him want to be better, better for him and better for Keith, because Keith is fucking amazing, honestly, and if Lance can stand on par with that then he has to be pretty damn amazing too.

So they’re always racing, always trying to one-up the other, and they’ll drag each other through every last bit of hell the universe throws at them because if Lance is going to stand at number one, you can fucking bet that spot next to him is reserved for Keith. If one of them starts to fall behind then the other is immediately dragging him back to stand on equal ground, challenging, baiting.

_I’m the only one who’s allowed to be better than you._

And Lance kind of hopes they’ll be in this race for the rest of their lives, constantly overtaking the other but still so far ahead of everyone else, until it’s Lance and Keith, standing at the end of the universe.

Because somewhere in the time that they became friends, that Keith first kissed him and Lance first kissed him back (two different scenarios, but no-one ever said this would be easy), that Keith became the first person he looks for after a fight and the last person he sees before he sleeps, things had changed.

Somewhere along the line, _Lance and Keith, neck and neck,_ became _Lance and Keith, back to back, against the universe._

Somewhere along the line, Lance had fallen in love.

And it only really hits him now.

His head jerks back, smacking painfully against the wall but he doesn’t pay it any mind because _holy shit, he’s totally in love with Keith. He’s in love and it’s probably the best thing to have ever happened to him._

“Dios mío,” he breathes.

And he’s known for a while, he thinks, but this is the first time the weight of the words have hit him. He loves Keith, and he wants to wake up every morning with him and fight alongside him and trace the lines of his jaw and be incinerated by Keith’s kisses until the day he fucking dies.

He wants to get back to Earth and introduce Keith to his family, to show him all the spots of Lance’s childhood and the things Keith had never gotten to experience. He wants to give Keith a permanent place to call home, to show him that he’ll always have a place to belong at Lance’s side, to take him to the furthest reaches of the universe and to the pizza shack on Varadero Beach.

He wants to marry him. Not today, but eventually, on every planet they can starting with Earth, and he wants a huge, fuck-off wedding for each one.

“Lance?” Lance brings himself back, focusing again on Keith, still only centimetres away. God, he’s gorgeous, it’s practically unfair. “You okay?”

And Lance _laughs._ There’s a strange lightness in his chest, a giddy sort of feeling he was once embarrassed to associate with Keith, but it’s there. Always has been. He brings his hands up to cup Keith’s jaw.

“Yeah,” he says softly. “I’m good. Absolutely awesome, actually.”

The fire in Keith’s eyes takes the back burner to a different sort of warmth, amusement softening the edges. Lance kind of wants Keith to look at him like that forever, and right now the idea doesn’t seem so impossible.

“You’re weird,” he says, and it sounds a lot like _you’re mine,_ so Lance couldn’t stop the next words out of his mouth if he tried.

“I love you.”

Keith goes still, his eyes widening imperceptibly.

And maybe the Lance from three years ago would have panicked, maybe rushed out of the room with a spluttered apology and fucked everything up. But this is Lance now, who has fought worse battles than anyone his age should even know exist and knows Keith well enough to be aware that has to wait for a reaction before he can know he’s screwed up, so he stubbornly shoves down the panic and resists the urge to bolt.

And a reaction he gets, because a second later the heat crashes back into Keith’s gaze like a wave and Lance hits the wall again and Keith is kissing him, hot and open-mouthed and scorching against his lips.

Lance’s fingers automatically fly up and tangle themselves in strands of dark hair, a small moan rising in the back of his throat only to be hungrily extinguished by insistent lips. Hands fist in Lance’s shirt and tug him impossibly closer, a leg sliding between his own.

“Say it again,” Keith murmurs, searingly hot against his lips, but it sounds more like a request than a demand.

Lance grins. “I love you.”

Keith pulls back just enough to look him in the eyes, his gaze almost desperate as it searches Lance’s face, looking for something Lance makes sure he finds. “Again.”

“I love you.”

“Again.”

“You know, this is usually the point where you either say it back or tell me you’re not ready.”

“ _Lance._ ”

“Keith,” Lance says, as seriously as he can manage with the grin currently splitting his face. “ _I love you_.”

Keith’s expression holds for a second longer, and then it’s flooded with something indescribable. His laugh is more of a delirious sounding little exhale, but his smile is warm enough to have Lance releasing the last dregs of tension from his shoulders.

“I…” Keith swallows. “I love you too."

And then he kisses Lance again; softer than before but still with a touch of heat, a heady warmth that spreads out through Lance from head to toe and _this,_ this is what he wants. Zarkon and Voltron and the galaxy at the end of the universe can wait, because right now Lance is smoking at the edges and loving every minute of it.

 _Death by fire,_  he thinks, as Keith’s kisses turn scalding. _What a way to go._

But if Keith is fire - _relentless, searing, intoxicating_ \- and Lance is water - _fluid, transparent, endless_ \- and Keith is going to burn him alive, then Lance promises to drown him in an ocean on fire.

Because love is a leveler.

**Author's Note:**

> HELLO COME FOLLOW ME ON [TUMBLR](http://buckettkun.tumblr.com/) pls k thx


End file.
